Return of Puckvoice

At our hotel in Berlin, I joined my roommate Cindy outside as she took a cigarette break. Another Sabres fan out there said, “Did you really used to write the hockey column for Artvoice?” I acknowledged Puckvoice was mine. He shook his head sadly and said, “I disagreed with you every week. I couldn’t believe some of the things you came up with.” I told him I was pretty sure a lot of people didn’t agree with me, but I never really cared what people thought. As long as I wasn’t lying to people, then agreeing with people week after week wasn’t really very interesting anyway. And, what I really heard from him was, “I read your column faithfully every week,” so whether he agreed with me or not, he was hooked.

In a move that my new Sabre friend will probably shudder at being the inspiration for, I return to the interwebs to talk about hockey from a fan point of view. As I just heard on an old episode of NCIS, “It’s a matter of opinion, how could it be wrong?” “Exactly, it’s a matter of you having the wrong opinion.” Whatev.

The first five years of the franchise aside, and with the arguable exception of a few weeks in 1999, there has never been a more exciting time to be a Sabres fan. Seriously, did my flight the morning of February 22^nd crash? A billionaire fan has bought the Sabres and is taking suggestions from the rabble as to how to improve the arena, the game experience, and the franchise? They really de-slugged the whole building and we don’t have to call it the “old logo” anymore? There really is warm water in the ladies room? They managed to slough Tim Connolly off on Toronto, in the personnel version of a 4-point swing? Clearly, I must be dead.